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MailServe for El Capitan 9.0.5 with Dovecot Replication

I love the Dovecot Replication feature. I have always wanted to set up a backup of my live server, that is ready to go if (and when) my live server goes down.

I thought the hardest problem that I’ll need to solve to solve is to find a way to do a live backup of the mail server, so that one is a perfect, totally up-to-date replica of the other.

That was until I discovered that Dovecot has a most excellent replication feature. It took me some time to figure out how to do all the Unix incantation to make it work – the documentation being quite sketchy. But here it is, in all its glory :)

I’ve implemented the user interface for the replication feature in MailServe 9.0.5.

1) enter the address of the replica server (that is also running Dovecot, as set up by MailServe),

2) enter a shared secret between the two servers,

3) turn the replication feature on,

4) Restart Mail Server.

And you need to mirror the same steps on the replica server.

That’s it.

If one fails, you’ve got all your users’ mail folders completely backed up on the other. And it runs automatically. When new mail comes, or when a user rerranges the contents of his mail folders, the backup mail server gets all the changes, within seconds. And it works in both directions. Make changes in one server – the changes will all automatically show up on the other. Great?!